Accessory for steam pressing device



ACCESSORY FOR STEAM PRESSING DEVICE Filed March 17, 1966 Jl'a, l

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j?" Dg@ 34 3,318,029 ACCESSORY FOR STEAM PRESSING DEVICE Sidney Jacobson, Sepulveda, Calif. (4225 Mary Ellen St.,

. Sherman Oaks, Calif. 91403) Filed Mar. 17, 1966, Ser. No. 542,987 3 Claims. (Cl. 38--97) This application is a continuation-in-part of copending application Ser. No. 384,869, filed Iuly 24, 1964, for

Accessory for Steam Pressing Device, now abandoned.

lsheet of a low friction, high temperature plastic material,

such as tetralluoroethylene, nylon or the like, between a heated iron and a fabric in the operation of pressing or steaming the fabric has numerous advantages. The perforated plastic sheet safeguards the fabric against damage by excessive heat and even prevents searing of delicate fabrics such as tailetas and satin that are damaged by temperature well below temperatures that are safe for cotton and wool. One particular plastic material which is sold under the trade name of Teflon is a good example of a material which makes it possible to use a steam iron at such a high temperature as to produce only dry steam and Athus avoids the creation of the water spots and streaks in fabrics that result from using relatively wet steam.

The use of the perforated plastic sheet also simplifies and shortens a pressing operation by sliding on a fabric surface with very low frictional resistance. In addition, the plastic sheet is not subject to corrosion and being passive and repellant with respect to nearly all substances has no tendency whatsoever to pick up foreign particles or `materials for transfer to the fabric that is under process.

For these reasons there has been a`widespread and sustained demand for an accessory in the form of `a supplemental sheet of low friction, high temperature plastic for use on pressing devices. For hand irons the supplemental vsheet has been manufactured` in quantity in the form of a shoe that is adapted to be releasably att-'ached to a hand iron with the shoe covering the bottom working surface of the iron and with a peripheral flange of the shoeengaging vthe perimeter of the iron to keep the position of the shoe fixed relative to the iron.

' In the early stages of development, the accessory sheet consisted simply of a suitably formed and dimensioned sheet of perforated'Teflon, as disclosed, for example, in United States Patent No. 2,750,697. It wasfound, however, that ywhile such a device served its basic purpose, the Teflon sheet gradually wrinkles with use. Apparently the Teflon sheet material progressively stretches or elongates with repeated use at high` temperature with the consequence that the plastic sheet changes from a desirably flat configuration to a wavy or undulating configuration. Eventually the wrinkles develop to the point that the plastic sheet cracks and must be discarded.

Various attempts have been made to avoid this economicrloss by reinforcing the plastic sheet. An early development consisted of stretching a perforated Teflon plastic sheet over a perforated metal reinforcement sheet. While this development was an improvement, it failed -to make the shoes durable for an economically long service life. One serious disadvantage of this construction is that the perforations of the plastic sheet and the inner reinforcement metal sheet must register toI permit steam to pass through the two sheets. The perforations in the plastic sheet are exceedingly small and numerous. For

United States Patent C l.' ,3l8,29 Patented May 9, 1967 ICC example, as set forth in the aforementioned United States Patent No. 2,750,697, the perfor-ations may be approximately 0.02 inch in diameter or no larger than 0.0625 inch with approximately 350 perforations per square inch. It would not be practical to attempt to register such small `and numerous perforations in a plastic sheet accurately with similar perforations in a metal -reinforcement sheet. To avoid this diiliculty, the perforations in the metal sheet must be several times larger in diameter than the perforations in the plastic sheet so that when the two sheets are placed together in a random manner only very few of the plastic sheet perforations are masked by the material of the reinforcement sheet. Unfortunately, however, making large perforations in t-he reinforcement sheet removes so much material that the reinforcement sheet is weakened and prone to buckle.

A later development was the concept of spraying the plastic material onto a perforated backing or reinforcement plate. This improvement eliminated the difficulty of registering the perforations in the plastic layer with the perforations in the backing sheet and made it possible to use a backing sheet with relatively small perforations for relatively high rigidity in comparison with a similar reinforcement sheet having closely spaced large perforations.

It has been found, however, that this last improvement falls short of complete satisfaction. One disadvantage of spraying plastics such las Teflon on a perforated backing plate is that time is required to build up thickness in the plastic coating and therefore economy dictates a relatively thin coating. A more serious disadvantage is that it is practically impossible to apply a sprayed Teflon coating that is uniform in thickness. In addition, a sprayed coating is less smooth and if a person merely slides his fingers across a sprayed plastic coating he can readily detect that the surface of the coating does not have the polish and smoothness of a fabricated plastic sheet. It has also been found that when a metal sheet with fine perforations is sprayed with plastic material, the deposited plastic material tends to clog or bridge the perforations in the metal thus the plastic material reduces the effective size of the perforations. To counteract this tendency, the perforations in the metal may be made -relatively large, but here again providing relatively large perforations weakens the metal reinforcement plate. A further disadvantage is that a spray coating of plastics such as Teflon lacks the internal cohesion of a conventional Teflon sheet. Consequently a sprayedA Teflon sheet is more susceptible to mechanical damage.

The present invention avoids all of the aforementioned disadvantages by a method of fabrication which is characterized lby the steps 0f first `bonding a sheet of unperforated plastic such as Teflon, nylon or the like, to -a reinforcement sheet of unperforated metal to form an integrally laminated sheet and the perforating the laminated sheet. As will be explained, various well known techniques may be followed in the production of a composite laminated sheet in preparation for the perforating step.

The features and advantages of the invention may be understood from the following detailed description and the accompanying drawing.

In the drawing which is to be regarded as merely illustrative FIGURE l is a perspective view of a typical embodiment of the invention in the form of a shoe adapted for releasa-ble attachment to a hand iron;

FIGURE 2 is an enlarged fragmentary section along the line 2 2 of FIGURE 1 showing how the perforated composite sheet is anchored to a frame that is shaped and dimensioned to fit around the periphery of a hand iron;

FIGURE 3 is a schematic perspective view showing how in the preferred practice of the invention a suitable plastic sheet is interposed between an unperforated plastice sheet and an unperforated metal sheet in preparation for the lamination operation;

FIGURE 4 is a schematic elevational View showing how the three sheets of FIGURE l may be united by subjecting the three sheets to suitably high temperature and to pressure by means of a pair of coacting rolls;

FIGURE 5 is a schematic perspective view illustrating the =step of perforating the composite laminated sheet;

FIGURE 6 is a plan view showing how blanks for the purpose of the invention may be cut out of the perforated composite sheet for use in fabricating the device shown in FIGURE 1;

FIGURE 7, which relates to a second practice of the invention, is a perspective view of a plastic sheet treated on one face for cooperation with adhesive material;

FIGURE 8 is a perspective view of a metal sheet in the process of being coated wtih a suitable adhesive for use with the sheet of FIGURE 7;

FIGURE 9 is a side elevational view showing how the sheet shown in FIGURE 7 may be placed on the adhesive metal coated s-heet shown in FIGURE 8 and then the two sheets may be passed through pressure rolls with or without heat to form a composite sheet that may be subsequently perforated for the purpose of the invention; and

FIGURE l0 is a simplified sectional view of dies for flanging the perforated laminated blank.

FIGURE 1 illustrates a selected embodiment of the invention in the form of a shoe, generally designated 10, that is adapted to be releasably mounted on a hand iron by means of a resilient member in the form of a fine coiled spring 11. The shoe comprises essentially a composite perforated sheet, generally designated 12, which is formed with a peripheral liange 13 and is permanently engaged by a metal frame 14 of a configuration to surround the perimeter of a hand iron.

While a preferred embodiment of the invention will be described utilizing the perforated plastic sheet of Tefion, it is to be understood that t-he invention may be practiced utilizing other plastic materials having similar mechanical, thermal and chemical properties.

As shown in section in FIGURE 2, the composite sheet 12 is of laminated construction comprising an outer Tefion sheet 15 suitably bonded to an inner backing or reinforcement sheet 16. Such a composite sheet with suitably dimensioned and spaced perforations 18 may be attached to the metal frame in any suitable manner.

In the present construction the metal frame 14 is of an angular configuration in cross section to form a continuous recess 2d of a dimension to receive the margin or edge of the Acomposite sheet 12. With the composite sheet lianged to the required configuration and mated with the frame, the attachment may be made permanent by simply applying pressure to deform the material of the frame to contract the continuous recess 20 into positive gripping engagement with the composite sheet. FIG- URE 2 shows in phantom how a pair of dies 21a and 2111 may be employed to pinch the frame 14 at spaced points for this purpose.

FIGURES 3 to 6 illustrate steps in the preferred method of fabricating the laminated sheet 12. FIGURE 3 shows schematically a plain unperforated aluminum sheet 16a, a plain unperforated Teiion sheet 15a and a thermoplastic sheet of suitable material that is interposed for the purpose of bonding the Teflon sheet to the aluminum sheet. Highly satisfactory results have been achieved by employing a thermoplastic sheet 25 which is available in commerce under the trade .name Teflon FEP-liuorocarbon film made from a completely fluorinated ethylene-propylene copolymer. This plastic material is `a true thermoplastic having a melting point in the range of S45-563 F. The aluminum sheet 16a may be of any suitable thickness, for example, a thickness of .030 inch, the Tefion sheet 15a may range in thickness 4 from .O20 inch to .O50 inch thickness, and the intermediate thermoplastic sheet 25 may 'be much thinner, for example from .001 inch to .006 inch thickness.

In some instances it may be necessary to treat or activate the intermediate plastic film 25 for adherence to a particular metal backing or reinforcement sheet, but I have found that no special treatment is required for adherence to ordinary aluminum stock. It is merely necessary to place the three layers of sheet material together and then to apply sufficient heat and pressure, the heat being at least on the order of 500 F. to soften the intermediate sheet 25 adequately for bonding the Teflon sheet 15a to the aluminum sheet 16a. FIGURE 4 shows how the three sheets may be passed through a pair of pressure rolls comprising .a lower rubber roll 26 and an upper steel roll 28. The required heat may be provided, for example, by placing an oil burner 30 inside the steel roll 28.

After the three laminations 16a, 25 and 15a have been processed in this manner, the intermediate lamination 25 is so thin that it is no more conspicuous than an adhesive coating but it suffices to bond the Teflon sheet to the aluminum sheet in a permanent manner.

The next step is to perforate the resultant composite sheet. FIGURE 5 shows diagrammatically the perforating step, only two perforating punches 32 being shown for clarity of illustration. It is to be noted that the punches 32 enter the composite sheet from the Teflon side so that any burr that is produced is on the opposite or metal side of the composite sheet. Thus the Teflon side of the perforated sheet is smooth around the rims of all of the perforations 18.

The next step is to cut blanks 34 out of the large perforated laminated sheet 12 as shown in FIGURE 6, the blanks being shaped and dimensioned in accord with the shape yand dimensions of the shoe shown in FIGURE 1. The next step is simply to form each of the Iblanks 34 with a marginal fiange for assembly to the previously mentioned metal frame 14. FIGURE 10 shows how a male die 35 may cooperate with a female die 36 to form a flange 13 on a blank 34.

In the alternate practice of the invention illustrated by FIGURES 7, 8 and 9, a suitable adhesive is employed to bond a Teflon sheet to an aluminum sheet. FIGURE 7 shows a Teflon sheet 40 with one-surface 42 suitably activated, for example by chemical etching, for cooperation with a suitable adhesive. The Purvis et al. Patent 2,789,063, dated Apr. 16, 1957, for example, discloses a method of activating a Teon surface in various ways, for example by use of la dilute solution of an alkali metal in liquid ammonia. Methods of activating a Teflon surface for this purpose are also discussed in technical literature published by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (Inc.).

FIGURE 8 shows an initial stage in the spreading of an adhesive 44 of an aluminum sheet 45. Various adhesives for this purpose are disclosed in the above mentioned patent and in the abovernentioned technical literature and anyone skilled in the art may select an adhesive that is sufficiently resistant to heat to serve the purpose of the present invention. FIGURE 9 shows how the Tefion sheet 40 may be placed on the ladhesively coated aluminum sheet 45 for the purpose of running the two sheets through a pair of pressure rolls 48 Iand 50. Either or both of the pressure rolls 48 and 50 may be heated to facilitate curing of the adhesive.

When the method disclosed herein is followed for producing the device shown in FIGURE 1, the result is a composite sheet that is truly unified with clean-cut perforations 18 for the free passage of steam from the hand iron to the fabric that is under process. Since the plastic layer is 4a conventional plastic sheet, the plastic layer is of uniform thickness and has a highly polished surface for minimum frictional resistance to sliding action on the fabric. Since the material of the plastic sheet by virtue -Q its mode of manufacture is tough with high internal cohesion and since the plastic sheet is positively and permanently bonded to the aluminum sheet, the composite sheet is rugged with no possibility of creepage 0r Wrinkling of the plastic surface. Since the `perforations in' the aluminum sheet are just as small as the perforations in the plastic sheet, the aluminum sheet has maximum strength and stiffness for its thickness in contrast to an aluminum sheet that has relatively large and closely spaced perforations as heretofore pointed out.

It will be apparent from the foregoing that, while particular forms of the invention have been illustrated and described, various modifications can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, it is not intended that the invention be limited, except by the appended claims.

I claim:

1. A method of fabricating an accessory shoe for a hand iron, characterized by the steps of z providing a frame shaped and dimensioned to enclose the perimeter of the bottom of the iron with said frame forming a downwardly facing recess;

bonding a sheet of a low friction, high temperature plastic to a metal reinforcement sheet to form .a laminated sheet;

punching distributed small apertures in said laminated sheet with the punching operation directed from the plastic face of said laminated sheet to the opposite face of said laminated sheet;

cutting the material of said 4laminated sheet to the general configuration of said frame;

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,750,697 6/1956 Jacobson 38-97 2,833,686 5/1958 Sandt 156-304 2,861,326 11/1958 Bergstrom 156-253 X i 2,876,565 3/1959 Jacobson 38-97 2,876,685 3/1959 Holmes 162-374 2,984,599 5/1961 Edwards 156-333 2,990,635 7/1961 Rogers 38-97 3,097,124 7/1963 Denenberg 156-253 X 3,126,311 3/1964 Fitz Harris 161-46 3,142,916 8/1964 Jacobson 38-97 3,257,746 6/1966 Cohen 38-97 PATRICK D. LAWSON, Primary Examiner.

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CERTIFICATE OF CORRECTION Patent No 3 ,318 ,029" May 9 1967 Sidney Jacobson It is hereby certified that error appears in the above numbered pat ent requiring correction and that the said Letters Patent should read as corrected below.

In the sheet of drawings Fig. l add reference character l0 and leadline shown to generally designate the shoe, reference character 13' and leadline shown to designate the lower peripheral flange, reference Character 14 and leadline shown to designate the metal frame; in Pig. 4 of the drawing, for"'24", read 15a for "22" read 16a for "Fig. 7'.' of the drawing, read Fig. l0 for "Fig. 8" of the drawing, read Fig. 7 for "Fig. 9" of the drawing, read Fig. 8 for "Fg. l0" of the drawing,

This certificate supersedes Certificate of Correction issued March ll, 1969.

Signed and sealed this 12th day of August 1969.

(SEAL) Attest:

EDWARD M.FLETCHER,JR. WILLIAM E. SCHUYLER, JR. Attesting Officer Commissioner of Patents 

1. A METHOD OF FABRICATING AN ACCESSORY SHOE FOR A HAND IRON, CHARACTERIZED BY THE STEPS OF: PROVIDING A FRAME SHAPED AND DIMENSIONED TO ENCLOSE THE PERIMETER OF THE BOTTOM OF THE IRON WITH SAID FRAME FORMING A DOWNWARDLY FACING RECESS; BONDING A SHEET OF A LOW FRICTION, HIGH TEMPERATURE PLASTIC TO A METAL REINFORCEMENT SHEET TO FORM A LAMINATED SHEET; PUNCHING DISTRIBUTED SMALL APERTURES IN SAID LAMINATED SHEET WITH THE PUNCHING OPERATION DIRECTED FROM THE PLASTIC FACE OF SAID LAMINATED SHEET TO THE OPPOSITE FACE OF SAID LAMINATED SHEET; CUTTING THE MATERIAL OF SAID LAMINATED SHEET TO THE GENERAL CONFIGURATION OF SAID FRAME; FORMING A PERIPHERAL FLANGE IN SAID PERFORATED LAMINATED SHEET TO CONFORM WITH THE CONFIGURATION IN PLAN OF SAID RECESS IN SAID FRAME; ASSEMBLING THE FLANGED PERFORATED LAMINATED SHEET TO SAID FRAME WITH SAID FLANGE OF SAID LAMINATED SHEET EXTENDING INTO SAID RECESS OF SAID FRAME; AND APPLYING PRESSURE TO SAID FRAME TO CONTRACT SAID RECESS INTO PERMANENT CLAMPING ENGAGEMENT WITH SAID FLANGE OF SAID PERFORATED LAMINATED SHEET. 